


Out of Suffering Come Strong Souls

by Bofur1



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood Loss, Cuddling & Snuggling, Doctors & Physicians, Explanations, Fainting, Father-Son Relationship, Fear of Death, Fluff and Mush, Hunters & Hunting, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Medical Trauma, Panic, Post-Trip, Pre-The Hobbit, Promises, Protectiveness, Stabbing, Women Being Awesome, Worry, Young Legolas Greenleaf, reassurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Bofur1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legolas is eager to greet the King and his guards when they return from a hunt, but instead he comes upon the most terrifying scene of his young life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Suffering Come Strong Souls

There was a commotion near the gates of the Greenwood stronghold, one that created a throng, crowding the doors and nearly making it impossible for the newly returned hunters to get through the courtyard on their animals. This must be why all of them were dismounting one by one, blending into the masses and trying to steady the animals that had already been abandoned by their masters.

One of said abandoned animals was the king’s elk, huffing and shifting restlessly in the confined spaces of the crowd without his master to calm him. Legolas, who had come to greet the hunters, stood on tiptoe to see, wondering if he should be worried about the elk or his father. He opted for the latter, scanning the group for the burnished armor he very much admired.

Not long ago, he had snuck very quietly into Thranduil’s room, snatched it from its resting place and tried it on, only for the gauntlets to slip off his hands and the weight of the breastplate to bowl him over.

“It seems we ought to take in the gauntlets a bit,” Thranduil remarked dryly from where he blatantly observed the child at the door to the washroom. Legolas’ punishment had been to clean the armor thoroughly of his handprints, but the prince hadn’t minded that one bit, knowing how beautifully shiny it would look the next time Ada put it on. He had a feeling Ada had chosen that consequence for just that reason.

The prince smiled distractedly at the memory but it didn’t last long, as a guard Legolas knew as Elros spliced through the crowd on his horse as though he were parting a wave.

“Make way!” he called urgently, spurring his horse to a trot even as they reached the home stretch. “Summon Nysella; we need her healing!”

At the name of their chief healer, Legolas couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer, scurrying down the steps into the courtyard. One of the horses startled at his reckless coming, whinnying and rearing anxiously. The prince squawked indignantly as he was grabbed rather roughly by the arm and pulled out of range of the horse’s hooves.

“What are you doing, princeling?” one of the hunters demanded, kneeling to his height. “You could be trampled here—”

“Who was hurt? Who’s hurt, Vandir?” Legolas shot back, trying to see over Vandir’s shoulder.

The older Elf’s face slowly dimmed and fell at the question. Mildly annoyed at receiving no answer, Legolas pulled free from Vandir’s hands and darted toward the center of commotion, where Elros’ horse was being swarmed. He froze abruptly when he neared the steed’s side, his wide eyes centering on his father.

“Ada?” Legolas gasped, his first instinct to recoil from this foreign, disturbing scene—his father, weak, his beautiful hair nearly brown with filth and his face ashen-white from lack of blood. To Legolas’ horror, quite a bit of red that should have stayed unseen stood out starkly on the splendid armor he himself had polished. Worst of all, the king wasn’t tall and proud and alert as Legolas knew him to be; instead he looked to be half-asleep, only managing to stay upright on the horse by draping his entire upper body against Elros’ back.

Finally Legolas’ second instinct sank in and he pounced at the horse, stepping on Elros’ foot in the left stirrup and trying to use it as leverage to clamber up. “Ada, wake up! Wake up!” Again Vandir intercepted him, seizing him from behind and stealing him off of the protesting Elros and the increasingly edgy stallion.

“Ada!” Legolas wailed, kicking fruitlessly against his captor. Thranduil stirred slightly, glazed eyes locking with his son’s, the latter welling with tears. The king’s hands shifted slightly, as though he wanted to rescue his son from Vandir’s increasingly tight grip, but their healer Nysella arrived at that moment and Elros helped her take him away before he could do so.

After several more moments Legolas gave up his struggle, looped his arms around Vandir’s neck and bawled. He felt the hunter swallow with difficulty before awkwardly hugging him, but Legolas simply wished he could imagine it was Thranduil.

Vandir and some of the other hunters stayed with him outside his father’s room, waiting some good hours for news. Though Legolas continually pried and pleaded with them, none of them would explain what had gone wrong on the hunt, so he charged straight for Nysella when she emerged from the room.

“What happened?! The hunters won’t tell me what happened and they won’t tell me how badly Ada’s hurt!” he burst out. In any other instance he would have been pleased to be tattling to someone with authority, but that was usually the _highest_ authority. He just had to take who was available.

“Then they ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Nysella announced, casting a dark look around at the hunters, who shifted apprehensively. A healer of either sex was not someone to anger.

After a long moment Nysella’s gaze softened on the prince. “Your ada’s going to be alright. He’s weak; he lost…a _little_ bit of blood…but he was asking for you the entire time I treated him. He wanted to be sure _you_ were alright!”

At these words Legolas hurried past her into the room, hurtling himself at the bed and, despite being nimble for his fledgling age, nearly missing the jump in his panic to get there. He eventually succeeded in reaching the top of the sheets and crawled into the vacant spot of his mother, pawing at his father’s arm.

Just when Legolas was beginning to think Nysella had lied to him, that his father had done the unthinkable and left him, Thranduil came around, muttering something in their Home Tongue which Legolas couldn’t catch—thankfully, as it was a curse of discomfort. He looked down so he could wrap his small hands around several of his father’s fingers and when he looked up again, they met eyes just like before.

“This isn’t the welcome I expected,” Thranduil commented as greeting, his voice raspy but calm. “Seeing you in tears.”

“N-Nysella said you’ll be alright,” Legolas whimpered. “And I don’t want you to die, Ada!”

“What she says is true, leafling; I’m not going to die.”

Legolas nodded, hoping to believe the words but not entirely reassured yet. “Are you sure?” Fleeting stress and clearer fatigue spanned the face across from him and Legolas tightened his grip, hugging the hand he held against his chest and demanding with a preemptive sob, “Do you—do you hurt enough to die?”

While the fatigue didn’t leave, the stress softened. Thranduil shook his head, mussing his hair where it ran against the pillows. “No, _ion-nín_ , I don’t. My wound does hurt, but not that much.” Nonetheless as Legolas put one hand on his silvery tunic, he heard his father’s breathing catch.

“Is that where it hurts?” he asked anxiously.

“Yes, and you didn’t have to touch it,” Thranduil chided before pursing his lips and closing his eyes until the pain eased.

Legolas hunched his shoulders and looked to the bedspread, probing in a small voice, “What happened?”

“Some of the woodsmen—you remember I told you about them—were hunting just as we were. Their leader was reckless with his weapon,” Thranduil explained mildly.

Legolas bit his lower lip, his creative mind substituting the gaps of what must have happened next with the worst ideas he could conjure up. Unbeknownst to him, a child’s mind created far kinder images—even of damage and suffering—than reality and the gravity of what had really happened escaped him. Even so Thranduil seemed to realize how haunted he felt.

“Listen to me, _gwinig_. I want you to put these worries to rest,” Thranduil ordered softly, pulling his hand away from his son’s so he could briefly stroke his hair. “ _Im na mael_. Simply tired.”

At long last a tentative smile broke out on the prince’s face and he swallowed or wiped away any remaining tears, inching closer and setting his head against the king’s shoulder. He only stayed still for a minute or two before glancing up, whispering, “Do I have to leave so you can sleep?”

“That wasn’t implied,” Thranduil murmured, sounding more than a little drowsy already.

“Then I won’t,” Legolas informed him, relieved at this answer. “Never, ever.”

“And neither will I,” Thranduil promised, pulling the boy closer so they would both be sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

> ion-nín: my son  
> gwinig: little one, baby  
> Im na mael: I am/be well


End file.
